Page 172 of Rookie Rules

"Grade two adductor strain. Two to four weeks if rehabilitation goes well. No surgery."

Relief crossed Luca's face. He did not come closer.

"Good. Not good. Better than it could be."

"Yes."

"You said you were wrong."

Direct. No allowance for Rowan to begin with medicine and hope intimacy arrived by accident.

Rowan set both feet still. "I was."

Luca waited.

The medical room contained an examination table, two chairs, cabinets of supplies, and every memory of the hotel night when Luca had helped Rowan through pain without demanding access in return. Rowan had accepted that care as if accepting were the brave part.

"I kept saying private." Rowan shifted his grip on the table. "What I did was clear your things out before anyone saw them. Send you home when I got nervous. Shut you out, then call it protecting you."

Luca's fingers stopped turning the puck.

"I made rules you had to live under. When I panicked, I added more."

"Yes."

Rowan gripped the edge of the examination table. "Graham was right. You were right. I was afraid. I used that against you."

Luca checked the corridor, then closed the door. Not secrecy as shame. Space for a conversation no one else was entitled to hear.

"Would you be saying this if you had not gone down?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You cannot know that."

"Vale has the change in writing. He handles formal reviews, and he will ask whether you want another mentor. I told Finn I needed a friend and that I had hurt someone. I did not give him your name."

Luca searched his face. "You did that before the injury?"

"Yes. I did not know whether you would ever speak to me outside hockey again. I still needed to stop doing the harm."

Luca placed the puck on the counter. "And the game? You watched me make the pass. You are proud. That is not the same as wanting a life with me."

"I was proud. You did not earn love by making that pass. You did not lose it when the other one missed."

Rowan's pulse beat hard beneath his throat.

There would never be a medically clean moment for this. No proof before exposure. No guarantee that the words would be accepted because he had finally managed to say them.

"I love you," he said.

Luca went perfectly still.

He did not soften it into care about or want. "I want breakfast with you when neither of us has practice. I want your jacket on the chair. I want to know when Boreal runs you late and I want you to complain about my food. None of that depends on your stat line."

Luca's eyes shone. His jaw remained set.

"I choose you," Rowan said. "The team stays. The fear probably stays. You stay too, if you decide to. I stop treating you like the part I can cut away."